Would-Be Worlds: How Simulation Is Changing the Frontiers of Science - Hardcover
Out of the bits & bytes of computer memory, researchers are fashioning silicon surrogates of the real world -- elaborate artificial worlds -- that allow them to perform experiments that are too impractical, too costly, or, too dangerous to do in the flesh. These laboratories of the future are the essential tools of a controversial new scientific method. This new science is the science of simulation. This book takes the reader on an excursion through a number of remarkable silicon microworlds & shows us how they are being used to formulate important new theories & to solve a host of practical problems. Color & B&W illustrations.
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Review:
Is there a science of economics? Can we actually conduct experiments to test its hypotheses? For once, the ethical and practical answers match: even were we willing to experiment on our fellows, our power to effect precise changes or to isolate control groups is limited, to say the least. But what if we could experiment on a smaller, simpler version of the world market? John L. Casti points the way toward just such a science once-removed of complex phenomena in Would-Be Worlds, an accessible overview of the use of computers in modeling and simulation.
From the Publisher:
From the Cambrian explosion to the Albuquerque transportation system to the NFL, we are shown how a few simple rules can give rise to dazzling complexity, yielding insights undreamed of before the silicon revolution. Casti touches on mathematics, evolutionary biology, biochemistry, economics, logic, literature, and meteorology, always with clarity and sympathy for the lay reader. At a time when children spend hours with their computers building and maintaining cities, ecosystems, and planets, Would-Be Worlds shows us how this play foreshadows the investigations these young scientists will pursue in the future. --Rob Lightner
A leading researcher and co-developer of the first artificial worlds, Casti describes the most important artificial worlds that have been created, explains how they work and profiles investigations taking place in such prominent laboratories as the Sante Fe Institute and Los Alamos. In this absorbing book he demonstrates how simulations are being used to analyze problems in a range of existing applications including financial markets, road traffic networks, planetary motion, weather forecasting, and the origin of life on Earth.
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- PublisherJohn Wiley & Sons
- Publication date1997
- ISBN 10 0788196766
- ISBN 13 9780788196768
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages242
- Rating
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